His father and mother incidentally taught him as much as Mr. Ready: his love of painting and music was fostered, indirectly: and in the 'dovecot' bookshelf above the fireplace in his bedroom, were the precious volumes within whose sway and magic was his truest life.

In Hewelsfield churchyard further down the green lane, I squeezed inside the hollow of the thousand-year-old yew and looked up into the lantern of its twisted trunk, illuminated like the inside of a dovecot through the perforations where long-dead boughs once emerged.

The little watering-place has returned to its primitive obscurity; and lions and lionesses, with their several jackals, blue surtouts, and bluer stockings, fiddlers and dancers, painters and amateurs, authors and critics, dispersed like pigeons by the demolition of a dovecot, have sought other scenes of amusement and rehearsal, and have deserted ST.

Perchance, with a dovecot in the centre, and fowls peeking about — with fair elm trees, then, where discoloured chimney-stacks and gables are now — noisy, then, with rooks which have yielded to a different sort of rookery.